He sighed. “Well, looks like I can send some men out to the docks to flush the two of them out; at least we know the general area they’re hiding from where you got ambushed last night. Why don’t you sit tight for a little while, and I’ll give you a call later.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sounds fair enough. And Jack.”
His face had a probing look.
“Give those plants some water. They’re starting to wilt.”
He hesitated. “Right,” he said.
I spent the rest of the day going through the last few days’ junk mail and thinking. No matter how I twisted things around, everything always pointed back to whoever was leaving me those notes. There was a connection somewhere that I didn’t have. And if the girl was the cat she seemed to be and eluded Rutgers’s men, and if the note-man didn’t reveal himself, the whole thing could stay very confused indeed.
As I was putting a late dinner on, Rutgers called. He had nothing to tell me on the girl and her father, but it seemed that Virgil wanted to talk to me, and that there might be the possibility of trading some information. I figured what the heck and headed downtown.
Halfway there I remembered I’d left the two front burners of the stove on and rather than burn my house down I turned back.
The front door had been opened, and as I reached the front porch the scent of rosewater hit my nostrils.
I edged the door all the way open and reached around to the umbrella stand where I kept a very heavy stick. It was pretty dark inside. I raised the stick in front of me and slipped inside.
I took two steps, then heard two sounds at once. There was a girl’s scream from one side of the living room, and at the same time a lamp fell over as someone rushed at me from the other side. I could barely see but I could tell that it was a man and that he had an upraised hand with something in it. He ran into me and the hand swung down at my chest but I knocked it out of the way. He scrambled to his feet and pulled at the front door and ran out. Whatever he’d been holding fell to the porch behind him.
I lay breathing heavily for a moment. Suddenly someone turned on the hall light overhead. I was momentarily blinded, but I pushed my way to my feet and threw my arms out defensively, blinking fiercely. After a few seconds I was able to see that the girl with the light brown eyes stood before me.
I told her to stay away from me while I shut the front door and then walked over to my writing desk and took out a gun from the bottom drawer. There was a folded note taped to the desk and I pulled it off. I waved the gun at the girl, sat down in a chair, and told her to sit down in one opposite me.
She did as she was told—she was shaking like a leaf and looked dazed—and then I asked her what she was doing in my house.
“I . . . came here to bring you to my father,” she managed to get out.
“Wasn’t that your father who just tried to kill me?”
She shook her head no.
I ignored her for a minute and pulled open the note, which read:
YOU MUST RETURN TO NORTH DOCKS AND LOCATE SCIENTIST
AND DAUGHTER. 10:30 TONIGHT. CASE DEPENDS ON IT.
2000 MORE DOLLARS IN YOUR ACCOUNT.
“Hell,” I said and showed the note to the girl. “Do you know who wrote this?”
She was really shook up for some reason but when she saw the look on my face and the way I held the gun she managed to open her mouth. “No.”
“What’s your name?”
“I . . . thought you knew. My name is Angela Beberger. My father is Edward Beberger.”
“Edward Beberger?” I said, startled. Edward Beberger was the inventor of the sherlocks.
The girl began to talk, in a kind of stupor. “I came here because my father wants to see you. He thinks you can be trusted.”
“What about the man who was here?”
“He was here when I came. He’s the man who’s been after my father and me all this time. He made me tell him where my father is . . .”
It all came into focus. I went to the front door and opened it, and there on the front porch was a pump sprayer, the kind you use to water plants. It was filled with rosewater. I showed it to Angela Beberger.
“He was spraying that all over when I came in. I only had three bottles. Two of them were stolen. They belonged to my mother when she was alive. She brought them from Norway—”
“Is your father alone now?”
“Yes.”
I made a phone call to Virgil and then turned back to the girl. “Take me to him,” I said.
• • •
When we got to the North Docks the floodlights were on and Virgil was waiting with his men.
“He’s up on one of the rocket gantries,” he said to me. “I wish I could kick you out of here and handle this myself, but he’s got Edward Beberger with him, and he says he’ll kill him if we don’t let you go up.”
I looked up into the bright lights and could just make out two figures perched on a gantry arm that swung out high above us. I told Angela Beberger to stay with Virgil and took a step towards the gantry. I stopped and turned back to Virgil.
“How close were you to finding out what was going on?”
It was an effort for him to tell me. “We thought for sure it was the girl, here. I owe you some money, Matheson.”
I turned back to the gantry. I took the service steps up the side one by one, in silence.
“Hello, Jack,” I said and I reached the top. He was on a small platform suspended between two girders about twenty feet away from me.
Below the platform was a drop of about a hundred meters. It was windy up there, and the floodlights gave everything a stark, black-and-white appearance.
Beberger was propped up against a steel canister with a plastic-handled knife in his chest. He looked dead.
Rutgers sat down on the platform with his feet dangling over the edge and began to polish his spectacles. “I had hoped it would take a lot longer for us to reach this point,” he said calmly. “Things didn’t go the way I planned, Phil.”
“If you hadn’t dropped that rosewater at my house tonight it might have taken me quite a while to figure things out.”
“But the girl had decided to trust you. That was another thing I hadn’t counted on. I thought I had the two of them too scared to trust God himself. That’s why I had to get Beberger tonight.”
“How long had you been harassing them?”
“A couple of months,” he continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “It was easy. I started with anonymous phone calls; after a while I showed up at their place and said the police had received a threat against them. I picked up the rosewater, a few strands of hair, a kitchen knife with fingerprints on it—enough to throw the sherlocks off for a while. After I killed Vindebeer they didn’t know what to think; it was obvious I was involved and since I was a cop, who could they turn to? I kept up the phone calls. Then they disappeared. I knew they were hiding down here at the docks somewhere, but I couldn’t find them. That girl was smart. That’s when I started leaving you notes.”
“To get me to flush out Beberger for you?”
“That was part of it. The girl knew my face, but I thought that if she got a chance to get ahold of someone else who was possibly involved, I could track the two of them down. She was so careful, though; even though I found out where they were hiding, she moved her father right after getting rid of you. That’s why I wanted you to go back, to give me another shot. But there was more to it than that, Phil.” His voice rose a bit, and took on a bit of an hysterical edge. “You see, the whole idea was for you to come in cold and figure things out before the sherlocks did. The whole idea was for you to beat that damned machine.”
“Like Paul Bunyan?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you killed Vindebeer and Ingri Hoffman?”
“No!” He looked straight at me. “I killed the two of them because Beberger was expanding his research.”
I gave a puzzled look.
“Come o
n, Phil! Don’t you read the papers? He wasn’t content with developing the god-damned black box Virgil is fondling down there. He was assembling a new research team to perfect the sherlocks; and eventually he was going to develop a centralized data bank that would replace almost all of the detective force in the city. Ninety-five percent. Most of the remaining personnel would be data computer experts, with only rudimentary police training. In one fell swoop, no more detectives. A way of life wiped out in a generation.” I was silent while he rubbed at his glasses. Then I said, “What now, Jack?”
He put his spectacles down on the platform and looked at me with tired eyes. “I don’t know, Phil. I suppose we could end this like an Alfred Hitchcock film with the two of us grappling on this little platform. Or I could sit here and start to weep like the crazy person I must be and let you lead me down to a squad car and a straitjacket.” He paused. “I’ve been confused for a long time, Phil, and this whole thing ended too soon. But I guess you’ll be the hero after.” He sighed heavily, pointing at Beberger. “I didn’t kill him. He’s only unconscious; there’s not a knife blade in the handle. Anyway,” he smiled weakly, “there are other people carrying on the same type of research he’s doing, so I guess it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Give me a hand down, will you?”
He took a step toward me with his hand out. I don’t think it was the wind or that he slipped or that he didn’t have his glasses on, but after one step he stumbled and fell from the platform, soundlessly hitting the concrete below hard. I looked down at his crumpled body, then at his spectacles lying on the platform. I picked up the spectacles and put them in my pocket.
Beberger was alive, as Rutgers had said, and when he came to I helped him down the steps of the gantry into the waiting arms of his daughter. I then waited solemnly as Virgil counted out five crisp ten-dollar bills into my hand. He wasn’t happy about it.
“You know,” he said, watching as Jack Rutgers’s body was bagged and carried off, “I still can’t believe a cop like that could do something like this. I knew he was a relic, but I didn’t know he was a stupid relic.”
I almost hit him then, but he quickly went on, seeing the look in my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, Matheson. I respected that guy. I knew he was like the old dog who can’t learn new tricks, and I had every intention of forcing him out when I could, but, after all, we were all after the same thing, right? We just have different ways of doing it now, right?”
“Sure, Virgil. Whatever you say.”
He seemed to want more, some kind of reassurance that what he was doing was worthwhile, but I left him to his little black boxes then; already a couple of his lab technicians were crawling up the gantry like sterile spiders to let their machines sniff what there was to be sniffed.
When I got up to street level and stepped out of the elevator I almost hailed a taxi, feeling the fifty dollars in my pocket already trying to leap out, but at the last moment I kept my hailing arm down and began to walk.
With the fifty dollars I renewed my investigator’s license.
THE FIELD BAZAAR
BY SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave up the practice of medicine to become the most famous mystery writer on earth. “The Field Bazaar” was written for The Student, the undergraduate publication of his alma mater, the University of Edinburgh. This sketch is an affectionate tour-de-force of Holmes’s deductive method. It has rarely, if ever, appeared in collections of the Holmes stories.
“I should certainly do it,” said Sherlock Holmes.
I started at the interruption, for my companion had been eating his breakfast with his attention entirely centred upon the paper which was propped up by the coffee pot. Now I looked across at him to find his eyes fastened upon me with the half-amused, half-questioning expression which he usually assumed when he felt he had made an intellectual point.
“Do what?” I asked.
He smiled as he took his slipper from the mantelpiece and drew from it enough shag tobacco to fill the old clay pipe with which he invariably rounded off his breakfast.
“A most characteristic question of yours, Watson,” said he. “You will not, I am sure, be offended if I say that any reputation for sharpness which I may possess has been entirely gained by the admirable foil which you have made for me. Have I not heard of debutantes who have insisted upon plainness in their chaperones? There is a certain analogy.”
Our long companionship in the Baker Street rooms had left us on those easy terms of intimacy when much may be said without offence. And yet I acknowledged that I was nettled at his remark.
“I may be very obtuse,” said I, “but I confess that I am unable to see how you have managed to know that I was … I was …”
“Asked to help in the Edinburgh University Bazaar …”
“Precisely. The letter has only just come to hand, and I have not spoken to you since.”
“In spite of that,” said Holmes, leaning back in his chair and putting his fingertips together, “I would even venture to suggest that the object of the bazaar is to enlarge the University cricket field.”
I looked at him in such bewilderment that he vibrated with silent laughter.
“The fact is, my dear Watson, that you are an excellent subject,” said he. “You are never blasé. You respond instantly to any external stimulus. Your mental processes may be slow but they are never obscure, and I found during breakfast that you were easier reading than the leader in the Times in front of me.”
“I should be glad to know how you arrived at your conclusions,” said I.
“I fear that my good nature in giving explanations has seriously compromised my reputation,” said Holmes. “But in this case the train of reasoning is based upon such obvious facts that no credit can be claimed for it. You entered the room with a thoughtful expression, the expression of a man who is debating some point in his mind. In your hand you held a solitary letter. Now last night you retired in the best of spirits, so it was clear that it was this letter in your hand which had caused the change in you.”
“This is obvious.”
“It is all obvious when it is explained to you. I naturally asked myself what the letter could contain which might have this affect upon you. As you walked you held the flap side of the envelope towards me, and I saw upon it the same shield-shaped device which I have observed upon your old college cricket cap. It was clear, then, that the request came from Edinburgh University—or from some club connected with the University. When you reached the table you laid down the letter beside your plate with the address uppermost, and you walked over to look at the framed photograph upon the left of the mantelpiece.”
It amazed me to see the accuracy with which he had observed my movements. “What next?” I asked.
“I began by glancing at the address, and I could tell, even at the distance of six feet, that it was an unofficial communication. This I gathered from the use of the word ‘Doctor’ upon the address, to which, as a Bachelor of Medicine, you have no legal claim. I knew that University officials are pedantic in their correct use of titles, and I was thus enabled to say with certainty that your letter was unofficial. When on your return to the table you turned over your letter and allowed me to perceive that the enclosure was a printed one, the idea of a bazaar first occurred to me. I had already weighed the possibility of its being a political communication, but this seemed improbable in the present stagnant conditions of politics.
“When you returned to the table your face still retained its expression and it was evident that your examination of the photograph had not changed the current of your thoughts. In that case it must itself bear upon the subject in question. I turned my attention to the photograph, therefore, and saw at once that it consisted of yourself as a member of the Edinburgh University Eleven, with the pavilion and cricket field in the background. My small experience of cricket clubs has taught me that next to churches and cavalry ensigns they are the most debt-laden things upon earth. When upon your r
eturn to the table I saw you take out your pencil and draw lines upon the envelope, I was convinced that you were endeavoring to realise some projected improvement which was to be brought about by a bazaar. Your face still showed some indecision, so that I was able to break in upon you with my advice that you should assist in so good an object.”
I could not help smiling at the extreme simplicity of his explanation.
“Of course, it was as easy as possible,” said I. My remark appeared to nettle him.
“I may add,” said he, “that the particular help which you have been asked to give was that you should write in their album, and that you have already made up your mind that the present incident will be the subject of your article.”
“But how—!” I cried.
“It is as easy as possible,” said he, “and I leave its solution to your own ingenuity. In the meantime,” he added, raising his paper, “you will excuse me if I return to this very interesting article upon the trees of Cremona, and the exact reasons for the pre-eminence in the manufacture of violins. It is one of those small outlying problems to which I am sometimes tempted to direct my attention.”
THE DEPTFORD HORROR
BY ADRIAN CONAN DOYLE
Adrian Conan Doyle collaborated with suspense master John Dickson Carr on The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of “new” adventures. “The Deptford Horror,” a story fully as harrowing as Sir Arthur’s own “The Speckled Band,” was written entirely by Adrian, who seems to have inherited a great deal more than just his father’s name.
I have remarked elsewhere that my friend Sherlock Holmes, like all great artists, lived for his art’s sake and, save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse, I have seldom known him to claim any substantial reward. However powerful or wealthy the client, he would refuse to undertake any problem that lacked appeal to his sympathies, whilst he would devote his most intense energies to the affairs of some humble person whose case contained those singular and bizarre qualities which struck a responsive chord in his imagination.
Sons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes Page 8
